Humanitarian Intervention During the Clinton Presidency

This summer, I had the opportunity to assist Professor Robert K. Brigham with research for his contracted book, which will examine the Clinton administration’s response to mass atrocities and humanitarian intervention. I began my research by focusing on President Clinton’s response, or lack of response, to the 1994 Rwandan genocide – a conflict that devastated Rwanda and resulted in the estimated death of 800,000 to 1 million Tutsis and pro-democracy Hutus. This research was most interesting because it revealed how an administration transitioned from originally supporting humanitarian intervention and multilateral cooperation, especially with the United Nations, to an administration that sought to block U.N. attempts to strengthen the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR). Most striking, I was shocked to discover the efforts that the administration undertook to deny the genocide, such as instructing U.S. Department of State spokesperson, Ms. Christine Shelly, to use the term “acts of genocide” instead of “genocide” to avoid having to intervene under obligation to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. By researching President Clinton’s response to Rwanda, I also became more aware of the relationship between the administration and the United Nations, specifically through U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright. By analyzing primary documents, such as international reports, U.S. Department of State reports, memos, and unclassified confidential cables, I have come to better understand the inner-workings and complex domestic, Congressional, and international pressures exerted upon the Clinton presidency.

President Clinton Addressing an Audience at the McClellan Air Force Base in October 1993. Photograph courtesy of the U.S. National Archives.

However, from discussions with Professor Brigham, it became clear that the next question to ask was: What caused the Clinton administration to be so hesitant to intervene in Rwanda? From my findings, it has become evident that President Clinton’s reaction encompasses several decades of U.S. foreign policy that fears intervention and stems from America’s failure in the Vietnam War. The U.S. learned several lessons from the Vietnam War that include: a need for clear and achievable objectives, Congressional and public support, the need for a focus on human rights, and that a successful military strategy requires an immediate, not gradual, attack. In addition to these lessons, presidents following Vietnam were forced to deal with a distrust of civilian leadership that emanated from the military and made the military more hesitant to support political objectives abroad. It was extremely interesting to research how each president dealt with the public’s new dislike for foreign intervention, such as President Carter who emphasized human rights and President Reagan who utilized a realist interpretation of the Vietnam War to restore American confidence in its foreign presence. Surprisingly, I found my research regarding changes to the military since the Vietnam War to be extremely interesting, such as the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 that reorganized the Department of Defense and promoted the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the role of primary military advisor to the president. Additionally, the Act mandated that the Executive Branch submit an annual National Security Strategy Report, which became a useful primary source for understanding an administration’s foreign policy outlook. Ultimately, from my research, I concluded that despite the growing confidence of the U.S. in foreign intervention (from the Reagan administration and primarily the success of the First Gulf War), the U.S. military’s humiliation in Somalia during the United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM) II caused memories of Vietnam to return to the minds of many citizens, including President Clinton. Thus, a year after UNOSOM II and with the publication of Presidential Decision Directive 25, which revealed the United States’ more selective approach to peacekeeping operations, President Clinton was paralyzed by fears of foreign intervention and unable to responsibly intervene in Rwanda.

President Bill Clinton in the Oval Office in January, 1995. Photo Courtesy of the William J. Clinton Presidential Library

This research opportunity not only expanded my understanding of U.S. Foreign Policy and the pressures that administrations face, but it also furthered my interest in humanitarian intervention. From this opportunity to work as a Ford Scholar, I now hope to expand upon my research in a senior thesis and, eventually, continue my interest in humanitarian intervention through post-graduate work.

Archiving Einstein

“To a collector, you see, the true freedom of all books is somewhere on his shelves.” – Walter Benjamin from ‘Unpacking My Library‘

“What can a library do with secret letters? We shall define libraries in general as places devoted to keeping the secret but insofar as they give it away. Giving a secret away may mean telling it, revealing… as well as keeping it so deeply in the crypt of memory that we forget it is there or even cease to understand and have access to it. In one sense a secret kept is always a secret lost.” – Jacques Derrida from Geneses, Genealogies, Genres and Genius

“Dear Posterity!

If you don’t become fairer, more peaceful, and generally more reasonable than we are, or have been, then the devil take you.

Having thus uttered this pious hope in all due respect, I am your (former)

sig. Albert Einstein” – Princeton, May 4, 1936 from Vassar’s Einstein Digital Collection

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The world seems over-populated with geniuses. I’m not trying to be cheeky (or, that is, I’m only trying a little), but, working with Professor Andy Bush these past few months to plan a Jewish Studies course for the Fall, my life has been teeming with the lot of them and I’m only saying what I see.

What have I been doing to be so graced with the presence of great men and women? I know that I’ve been reading, copiously, feverishly, that I’ve been sitting in various positions in varying stages of madness (but always with a cup of coffee in hand) in the library or the Krafted Cup trying to discern what is it that makes something collectable. To put something in an archive, Walter Benjamin seemed to be telling me (fairly shouting at me via tome and photocopied essay), you must be in love with it. What else? Only an object of passion may gain access to the portraiture that is your private collection. A true collector, Edward Fuchs of Benjamin’s famed essay for instance, collects only that which manifests his absolute devotion: materials that he must collect and that are, in fact, not only very material, but also that have been forgotten or have ‘died’ somehow in the course of their existence. This took me off on a long ahistorical journey of materialism and poetry, which ended, as it began, with Einstein. Or rather, what remains of his ‘genius.’ Let me explain.

Among our great collectors we might place Otto Nathan, former Vassar professor. And the object of his devotion? His companion and correspondent Albert Einstein, of course. Nathan collected the debris of forty years of friendship and aid: letters from Einstein, from Elsa, Einstein’s wife, postcards, photographs, and ephemera because, it is not too difficult for one to make the assumption, he loved Einstein dearly.

But, Einstein himself seems not to be a collectible material (if amalgamations of public memory might ever said to be materials) because there’s a distinct way in which he has not yet died – not yet garnered the potential energy of the marginalized that allows a collector the capacity to save him from obscurity. He is a constant ghost, or perhaps, not he himself but his vestigial consumable discoveries and the inevitably false phantom of his personality. Everyone knows he was the perfect absent-minded professor. A genius and goofy slob to a fault. Cixous writes aptly of herself what might be applied to the form of our genius’s fame “I am obsessed by love, lost in my papers…” And we all know this to be true. Everyone knows Einstein. Everyone knows his love of his work, how he was absorbed by it entirely. Everyone owns this story and, in fact, his very name: the synonym of genius. And here even, he shows the form of that loss, the process by which a word so simple and common as a name might skitter away from you, might scatter into indiscernible, unrecognizable episodes of a life we, looking back on seemingly immutable evidence, will never truly have access to. The illusion of a complete picture is inevitably breathing in every mind that contemplates this defining figure of ‘genius.’ So what is there to understand? If we acknowledge the arrogance and impossibility of this seemingly fixed state of mind, the parasitic and glutinous quality of thought, where does that leave those who truly wish to delve into the history of one long-dead human’s beating heart? His brain was stolen by Princeton, as the story goes, so the heart seems to be our best point of access.

We’re left with love letters. Or longing for them at least. We’re left with what we hope are love letters here in the Vassar Library. Letters of some substance expressing a love for those of us in an unimaginable future who might take the time to look back. There’s a way in which every collection constitutes a love letter to the future. Anything that’s collected at all, kept in an archive, temperature controlled and preserved, seems to indicate that the collector imagined a future in which these items would be graced once again with human gaze. This is how we may read what is left to us of ‘genius.’ What Otto Nathan has circuitously left to us: a collection of letters. This is all we have, in ‘truth.’ All we may hold in our own hands. All we may know with the certainty of touch (if our archivists would ever allow such a thing without gloves). And I’ve read them. I know, more or less, the contours of their contents – the money, and travel, and legal transactions they contain. If one looks at them to discover Einstein’s secret soul, a second more relative theory of relativity, if one simply adds them to the careful progress of a great historical figure’s life, disappointment may lurk. Our option it seemed then, was to consider an alternative: to keep our preconceived notions distinct from the letters, to ignore the tenacious stream of history, and to attempt to set aside what we knew or thought we knew of Einstein. In Benjamin’s words ‘to blast the materials out of their context’ and see the material letters simply as they are – to see them as material. And then, succeeding in that, to see what we might possibly gather from such an unusual kind of inquiry.

I have no definitive conclusions, as far as I can tell, only more questions: What is collecting? Bringing order, bringing objects, brining objects in afterlife (playing god of all things that might be considered thing-like)? What is to be learned from such a process? What form and function might collecting have in the modern day (our present era of digital archivization where treasured material and inane action are likewise eternally preserved on the indelible inter-web)?

We were trying, in part, to understand if it was possible to do anything with an archive other than admire it. The Einstein Digital Archive provokes truly proper amounts of awe, especially the care and consideration that went into its digitization and continues to go into its physical and digital preservation. But in all reality, even if he were still living in the biological sense, Einstein does not need our admiration. Even he, I’m sure, would admit that he garnered quite enough esteem to last him a lifetime and, as we know, far beyond. He doesn’t need anything more from us; but, it seems there might be something we’re still yet looking for from him.

Professor Islamaj and I worked on a project titled Jump Starting Structural Change. I had not done a great deal of work in the area of structural change previously so I saw this as an opportunity to both expand my understanding in an area of economics as well as the research process in general.

Structural change is about countries adapting to their changing economic environment to maximize labor productivity. As industries become more or less productive over time, or as a result of policies, labor flows between them. Whether this labor moves to more or less productive sectors can have a large impact on the economy as a whole. Most people think of this as the transition from Agriculture to Manufacturing and finally Services. I started my research with a study of “Globalization, Structural Change, and Productivity Growth, with an Update on Africa” by Margaret McMillan, Dani Rodrik, and Íñigo Verduzco-Gallo, and developing my research further using similar papers.

Over the course of the summer I spent a great deal of my time coding in Stata, and working through different methods of both representing and analyzing the data gathered. With a great deal of work being done on whiteboards in addition to computers, we now have a solid foundation of information to build off of, and what we feel are clear representations of results.

This summer proved to be a strong test of my understanding of both Econometrics and Macroeconomics. Through a study of others methodologies, and experimenting with some methods of my own, I am confident in the material I worked with and am eager to expand on the research I have done.

Below are examples of some of the results with brief explanations:
This Graph shows the growth of structural change from year to year of four geographic regions, each composed of a diverse range of economies. We can see that Asia experienced a strong growth in positive structural change starting in the 90s while Europe and the USA experience negative structural change throughout the 80s, 90s, and 00s diminishing the positive change experienced in the 70s. This is only one representation of our results on a regional level.

We can see that china has seen consistent positive structural change throughout our sample with the largest dip occurring in the late 90s. This is attributed to the dip in chinas agricultural productivity while the share of labor remained the same.

Compare this to France’s experience

We can see that from the late 80s to the early 90s the economy doesn’t experience any significant structural change but begins to fall from in the mid 90s. This can be attributed to a stagnancy in agriculture while both manufacturing and financial services declined.

Internal carbon pricing for achieving carbon neutrality at Vassar

Climate change represents the most daunting crisis our world faces today. Global efforts toward carbon neutrality, however, are not happening fast enough. As a small liberal arts institution, Vassar is well suited to experiment with innovative strategies to reduce its own emissions, and set an example for other organizations. My research explored the feasibility and potential effectiveness of using a carbon tax and/or carbon accounting at Vassar to reduce our carbon footprint. My coworkers and I conducted research on the theory of the ‘social cost of carbon,’ interviewed representatives from companies like Microsoft, Google, and Facebook that have implemented an internal carbon tax, and visited Yale to discuss their innovative carbon charge model that will be implemented this academic year.

Yale's Kroon Building is LEED platinum certified.

Image 1. Yale’s Leed Platinum certified Kroon Building. We received a tour while visiting.

Carbon emissions result in an incurred cost to society. Carbon pricing seeks to internalize this externality by setting a price on the per/ton value of carbon emitted. The EPA calls this price the ‘social cost of carbon,’ and currently estimates the value at $40 per metric ton of carbon dioxide emitted (EPA 2015). Incorporating carbon pricing into operations has the potential to reduce emissions, prepare Vassar for an externally imposed carbon tax, create educational opportunities for students and faculty, and to distinguish Vassar as a leader by setting an example for the rest of the country.

A breakdown of Vassar's 2008-2009 fiscal year emissions. The two primary emissions come from natural gas heating and electricity.

Image 2. Vassar’s 2008-09 fiscal year greenhouse gas emissions breakdown.

Carbon pricing can be incorporated into accounting processes or used as an internal carbon charge. Integrating carbon pricing into accounting could shift capital project decision making from short-term to long-term prioritization by illustrating the relative lifetimes of their carbon footprints. There are two primary models for a carbon charge. The central fund model, currently used at Microsoft, imposes a tax on emission-intensive products like gasoline or electricity. At Vassar, this could mean charging departments directly for their total electrical, heating, or transportation use, and allocating the raised funds for carbon-reduction investments. Alternatively, Yale’s approach redistributes funds between departments based off their relative annual emission reductions, thus achieving “revenue-neutrality” for the college while incentivizing behavioral change.

The feasibility and effectiveness of different models need to be explored further, so a white paper of our findings will be issued and a task force will be created to determine which model, if any, is appropriate at Vassar.

Work cited: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “The Social Cost of Carbon.” 2015. http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/EPAactivities/economics/scc.html

Porfirio Rubirosa: Race, Masculinity and Mobility

A post made to Twitter June 8, 2015.

It’s been over fifty years since “the glamorous” Porfirio Rubirosa last graced the international night scene with his Dominican charm, yet many are still reminiscing on the life and times of the famous playboy. Porfirio Rubirosa Ariza, known by family, friends and close acquaintances as “Rubi,” was born January 22nd, 1909 to Pedro Maria Rubirosa (a general) and Ana Ariza Almanzar (the granddaughter of a Spanish general) in San Francisco de Macorís, Dominican Republic. A Dominican by chance and a Parisian by choice, Rubi would become the most infamous playboy of the 20th century. Between 1932 and 1965, Rubi married five times and maintained numerous affairs with the world’s wealthiest and most famous women–most notably, Zsa Zsa Gabor. Regarded as the great “Latin Lover” of the 20th century, Rubi is best remembered for his charisma, charm and Creole handsomeness. But how did Rubi, a non-White Dominican man with no particular skills (acting, business or otherwise), come to enjoy the highlife appreciated by Frank Sinatra, Aly Khan and the like?

Prof. Paravisini-Gebert and Prof. Woods-Peiro attempt to answer this question in their forthcoming e-book, Porfirio Rubirosa: Race, Masculinity and Mobility. In assisting them with this research, I’ve learned that Rubi was an exception to the rule- though most obviously a person of mixed race, Rubi was not understood to be Black. During a time when race served as a basis for discrimination and genocide in both the U.S. and Europe (though it still does today), Rubi managed to marry four White, non-Dominican women: Danielle Darrieux, Doris Duke, Barbara Hutton and Odile Rodin. The racialization of Rubi as Latin rather than Negro was particularly crucial for his social mobility: it allowed him to pass as non-Black and thus, gave rich, White women the green light. Though Rubi was well aware of his own Blackness–he often sported Panama hats and protected his face with honey–his race was hardly noted by the press. In fact, Langston Hughes observed: “So I have not seen in the colorful obituaries of the late Rubirosa in the American press, any reference to race. Had he been an American citizen by birth, the headlines probably would have read: NEGRO PLAYBOY DIES.”

Zsa Zsa Gabor and Rubi

Rubi was not only exoticized because of his race, however. He was also rumored to possess an appreciable genital endowment. Indeed, his first wife, Flor de Oro Trujillo (El Jefe’s daughter and Rubi’s only Dominican wife), confessed that “In time, he began to make love to me in different ways, but when it was over my insides hurt a lot” (Levy 2005:48). The rumours and whispers of this endowment contributed to Rubi’s hyper-masculinization–if there had been any doubts about Rubi’s masculinity, and in particular his ability to please women, Flor’s and other women’s anecdotes confirmed his tíguerismo. It also helped that Rubi was sporty and interested in the fast life–he was an avid polo player and a terrible race car driver, but a race car driver nonetheless. Having led a fast, dangerous life [both socially (he was named in several divorce cases and involved in various crimes) and physically], many have deemed Rubi’s 1965 car crash death “a fitting end.” Fifty years later, however, Rubi’s charisma and playboy ways have gone unmatched and it seems that many are still asking, where are the glamorous playboys of yesteryear? Continue reading →

Peer- and Self-observation as Professional Development: Teacher Learning Across Linguistic, Cultural and Preparation Differences in a Dual-immersion Bilingual Education School

The Overarching Project:

This summer I worked under the supervision of Professor Cann on a project that studies what co-teachers from different cultural, linguistic, and preparation backgrounds can learn from one another in a dual immersion education setting. The participatory action research (PAR) project itself, a professional development intervention program, was conducted in the spring of 2015 at a rural, K-11 bilingual school in Costa Rica, with two teams of co-teachers (each with one U.S. teacher and one Costa Rican/Tican teacher). In the first week of my internship, I conducted interviews with teachers and former administrators in order to document a brief history of professional development at the school. In conjunction with the school’s bilingual coordinator, I dedicated my time to conducting a preliminary analysis of qualitative data – including interviews, surveys, field notes, and audio recorded sessions – to see 1) what teachers can learn from one another in a professional learning community (PLC) and 2) the benefits of such a process. These efforts went towards writing two proposals in hopes of presenting research findings at the American Educational Research Association conference in 2016.

Brief Summary of Results:

The PLC session data revealed that through peer observation, teachers learned new strategies for student engagement. These strategies include different ways of teaching a particular lesson, reading instruction strategies, and classroom management techniques, as well as when to implement these strategies. Some teachers identified specific strategies in their peers’ practice that they were interested in implementing in the classroom. These included developing more routines in their classroom, attempting new language-based activities, addressing the class as a whole, and focusing on time efficiency, among other strategies. After adapting strategies from other teachers and implementing them in their own classrooms, some teachers expressed desire to change the adopted strategy to suit their particular teaching style.

Anonymous, Respondent 4, Feedback Survey

In the process of examining student writing, teachers were able to reflect on their own expectations of student writing and what they value in writing. When analyzing student writing samples, most teachers commented on sentence structure, idea development, and clear expression of ideas. Some teachers also noted the students’ honesty in answering the prompt and staying on topic. Tican Spanish teachers in particular, however, commented on the aesthetic of the work, such as handwriting, and grammar, such as accents. After working together, they realized the importance of relating class material to the student’s lives in order to keep students interested in their writing.

In listening to other teachers discussing their observations, they were able to notice aspects of their own teaching through their peers’ eyes, such as effectiveness of their own classroom instruction and the power of classroom culture. Teachers also reported that the benefits of this process (and by extension, the PLC group), were: being able to become familiar with peers on a “deeper professional level” (Anonymous Respondent in Feedback Survey), recognizing the best practices and applying them, and becoming comfortable with being observed.

Looking Ahead

What teachers can learn from one another through PLCs in a bilingual context is an understudied realm of bilingual education. Thus, we aim to continue this project with the teachers themselves as the lead facilitators of the program. In addition, we hope to present our findings at the 2016 AERA conference in order to share our findings.

Anonymous, Respondent 1, Feedback Survey

Capturing Canterbury Cathedral

Art historians have long grappled with the challenge of describing, measuring, and representing medieval architecture. Though hundreds of these buildings have been standing for as many years, few records exist of their construction and what drawings have been made rely heavily on simplification and idealization of lines and shapes. In order to measure the buildings, historians had to rely on rulers, plum bobs and string – which is tedious and less than accurate. With the recent development of new technologies, however, today’s art historians have the ability to accurately measure these magnificent constructions.

Canterbury’s 3D point cloud in Cyclone, a program used to slice the data into manageable sections (the bright colors are due to an intensity mapping mode, rather than scan color)

Professor Andrew Tallon uses laser-scanning technology to scan medieval buildings. With this method, a laser beam measures the distance to each point it hits as it sweeps around the building. These measurements are then mapped in a virtual 3D space as points corresponding in color and location to what they hit – creating a three-dimensional model of the building comprised of millions of tiny data points. From this data, we can trace exact ground plans and section views, based on the fabric of the building itself rather than half-measured, half-deduced information. This new exactness in measurement allows us to capture the reality of the buildings as never before.

In this project, I used the data from this laser-scanning technology to create the first accurate sections of Canterbury Cathedral’s choir, presbytery, and Trinity Chapel.

Canterbury’s apse and high altar

Why Canterbury? This building is particularly interesting to look at among medieval buildings because of clear progression of style and method with different architects and a uniquely well-documented history of construction, as well as its social and political history as the site of the martyrdom of Thomas Becket. In 1174, when a fire destroyed the Glorious Choir, the monks of Canterbury hired William of Sens to reconstruct the choir, though after he fell from the scaffolding a few years later, the monks replaced him with William the Englishman as new architect. The development in design between the two master builders and even within each one’s contribution is evident in the building’s construction. Not only is this clear progression of ideas evident in the building, it is documented by Gervase, a contemporary monk thought to have been involved in the construction. Such documentation of the building process is incredibly rare, and helps us understand the thought processes and ideas of the builders and monks at the time. In this way, the building presents a unique opportunity to read changes in ideas, aesthetic, and method in actual data of the building as well as from a rare account of the architectural progress of the building by someone involved. Furthermore, its long role as a pilgrimage site for Thomas Becket gives it a historical significance that makes Canterbury a fascinating building to study, both architecturally and historically.

Rev. Robert Willis’ 1845 section of the choir after and before the fire of 1174

To date, there has been no accurate representation of the building. Most art historians have based their studies off of Reverend Robert Willis’ account of the building from 1845. This account, detailed though it is, is limited because of the inaccuracy of measurement and representation. Historians are unable to examine the actual reality of the building based on Willis’ account, as it does not represent the building as it has shifted and settled over the centuries.

This project changes this. With laser scanning technology, we are able to document the real dimensions of Canterbury Cathedral to an accuracy of several millimeters. The laser scans create millions of data points in a virtual 3D space that can be sliced, rotated, and moved through, allowing us to examine the building as never before – as an accurate three-dimensional model on a computer screen. However, at this stage, the data is only a cloud of points – intriguing to explore, but often unclear and difficult to read. In this project, I converted the Canterbury point cloud into usable section views by tracing the data in AutoCAD.

Data slice through the choir with drawing overlay

Data slice through Canterbury’s choir with drawing overlay

Doing this, however, is not as easy as connect-the-dots. At times the data was confusing as to what the points might represent, or in places where the laser was blocked, I was forced to extrapolate what it might look like by exploring the 3D points renderings and comparing that to spherical panoramic images of each of the scanning locations. One of the greatest challenges I faced with this project was trying to represent three dimensions in two – a challenge when, for example, vaults project in a curve into our space. In addition, no part of the building is perfectly lined up – columns are out of line, arches are at odd angles to each other. Often, I was faced with a decision between accuracy and clarity. At times, in order to show something useful in the sections I drew, it required the elimination of a detail or collapsing several section planes into one. In this sense, though these new drawings’ measurements are more accurate than ever before, the drawings are nonetheless filtered in order to create as understandable a section as possible – a dilemma impossible to solve in this type of representation.

Even with these challenges, these section drawings of Canterbury Cathedral are the most accurate to date. With these new sections, art historians can study the building based on real data rather than simplified models of the building. Not only are drawings such as these useful for studying the building in an art historical sense, they are also useful for upkeep and maintenance. For example, laser scanning can reveal points of weakness in the building caused by the thrust of the vaults and which columns or buttresses are working against that stress. Both in physical and historical analysis of Canterbury Cathedral, the greater accuracy of these scan-based drawings is the key to a better understanding of the building.

This project resulted in the first three accurate section views of Canterbury, but the work is far from finished – Canterbury has yet to have an accurate ground plan drawn, and exact elevation drawings would also be a first. A simple three-dimensional model based on this data would also be a powerful tool to study the building in new ways. Those will be the next stages in this project, where we use laser-scanning technology and AutoCAD to capture Canterbury Cathedral as never before.

The completed drawing of Canterbury’s Trinity Chapel: vaults are light pink to indicate their projection into space. White lines mark what could not be read from the laser scan and had to be estimated.

For a glimpse of how laser scanning technology is used to analyze buildings, take a look at the National Geographic article on Professor Tallon’s analysis of the National Cathedral.

Urban Water Development and it’s Cultural Effects

This project is really a multifaceted one, complicated and interwoven with stories of tension and emotion as only Anthropology can unveil. The work consists of hiking and surveying around the sites of two reservoirs owned by the City of New York. These reservoirs, one in the Catskills and one just south of Poughkeepsie, are far far (50-125 miles) away from the city they supply. The construction of these reservoirs in the late 19th-early 20th century involved massive land acquisitions by the city, displacing whole towns full of buildings and people. This invasion helped foster a culture of distrust in those still living around the reservoir. Our project then is to untangle the connections and histories of the area, to figure out what happened, what is happening, and what could be done to fix some of the bridges that were burned long ago.

Our primary method for digging up and reconstructing the past is Archaeology (although we don’t do any actual digging). The team travels to New York City owned land, policed by the NYC Department of Environmental Protection, and surveys the sites, looking for any signs of previous or current cultural activity. My specific job on this project is as the field photographer. I take high-quality digital images of everything we find and then database the images so that we can draw connections and conclusions from our field data. We have found that many city owned sites, although advertised as “virgin forest,” are riddled with cultural artifacts of past land use. Using the artifacts we find we can piece together a better picture of what was culturally happening in the area and how it affects those living there today.

The Culture of Competition

Competition weaves a thread between all individuals who are associated with it: parents, coaches, referees, and competitors. The manner in which this thread is comprised influences what happens on the field in the heat of competition; interestingly enough, each individual that’s involved with a team, though s/he may never put on a uniform, holds a personal stake in the success or downfall of any team.

Over 21 million youth are involved in playing travel sports (The Aspen Institute, 2014).

Over 21 million youth are involved in travel sports (The Aspen Institute, 2014).

Throughout the course of this year, I followed three youth travel teams. This summer, I had the opportunity to focus my efforts mainly on observing the practices and games of a high school basketball girls travel team. Lauren Wiebe (Ford Scholar for Professor Chris Bjork) and I conducted ethnographic research at the team’s practices and competitions, taking note of everything that I heard and saw while at their events. I began to pick up on the patterns of interaction that existed between each individual of the organization, whether that was a parent, a coach, or a player. Slowly, I became part of their community and witnessed firsthand the culture of competition in youth travel sports. My ethnographic research culminated in gathering information on parents’ expectations of their children in athletics as well as their degree of involvement in these programs. Professor Bill Hoynes, my faculty mentor, and Professor Chris Bjork are handing out our surveys to more parents over the summer to gather more responses before we analyze our data in the fall.

Many parents see athletic participation as a stepping stone to get into college,

Many parents see sports as a stepping stone to get into college, with the hopes of seeing their child receive an athletic scholarship.

One of the biggest attractions in becoming involved with competitive travel sports programs is the allure of gaining an athletic scholarship to cover the cost of receiving a college education. My individual research this summer was centered around determining the effects of travel sports on collegiate recruiting. I interviewed eight athletic administrators, college coaches, and club directors from around the country to begin collecting information for a chapter that focuses on collegiate recruiting in Professor Hoynes and Professor Bjork’s future book. Travel teams are viewed as the “necessary evil,” as they are essential for providing the visibility required in the recruiting identification process, but come with making large financial sacrifices. Future research will be conducted within this year to further explore issues of access within travel sports and how travel sports impact the student-athlete population at colleges throughout the United States.

Evaluating Food Justice Initiatives

migrant farmer

This summer I undertook a project under the supervision of Canidce Lowe Swift that evaluated existing initiatives for food justice. In this case, we studied a small facet of the food justice world, which was justice for farm workers. To do this, I conducted participatory observation by interning with the Rural and Migrant Ministry (RMM). This is a nongovernmental organization that works for equality and justice for rural and migrant workers in the Hudson valley, in partnership with other branches that work for the larger New York area. Migrant farmers are those farm laborors who might move from farm to farm each season or each year, sometimes from other parts of the country, and often from other parts of the world. My first goal was to understand the conditions that create inequality for migrant workers. What governmental and social attitudes exist now that contribute to the extreme poverty that many migrant farmers live in? These issues include issues of immigration documentation, language barriers, lasting effects of slavery, and racism which manifest themselves in coercive and oppressive labor conditions. We also aimed to understand the existing projects that the RMM is undertaking in terms of achieving political and social change. How does the organization address the multifaceted issues facing farm workers? I studied, therefore, the political demonstrations, organizations, and actions that are coordinated by the RMM. In addition, I became involved with several different projects within the RMM, which included a very large focus on empowering youth who come from rural or migrant families. Lastly, I studied the function of the office as a case study for the demographics who are involved in working for justice, wether farm workers themselves were present, and how this may or may not have affected the organizations efficacy. Overall, I discovered that the group does and incredible amount for empowering voices for the future, and for attempting to influence policy. The RMM, however, was at times out of touch with the diverse groups of peoples that comprise farm laborers, often have a limited base for their own research due to the way in which the workers make connections within the farm community, and undertake very little poverty relief type aid. However, I see the last issue as the difference between charity work and social justice work, or good distribution versus empowerment. This fall I am continuing my work with the RMM for both personal and academic reasons, hoping to understand these issues for further research with my professor, and for understanding my role in social justice initiates in the future.